Jorge Pardo

For his first exhibition in the UK, internationally renowned artist Jorge Pardo bought a house in Mexico - a dilapidated structure located in the heart of the country's second biggest city, Mérida, on the Yucatan Peninsula. Though situated in Mexico, the house was part of the exhibition in which the galleries were filled with an array of new work by Pardo including lamps, paintings, drawings and cut-outs.

For several months he rebuilt the structure, reconstructing it and eventually furnishing it with Pardo designed tiles, floors and other decorative elements created from the textures and colours he has experienced within the local culture. Transformed into a sculpture that is also functional as a residence, the house/artwork will remain part of the landscape, vividly integrating its owner and visitors into the overall surrounding environs.

Since the mid 1980s, Pardo has been utilising forms and aesthetics that are normally associated with functional design and architecture, subverting the conventions of contemporary art and forcing the viewer to re-examine the complex status of an artwork.

His singular vision of art is all-encompassing, drawing no hierarchical distinctions between the paintings, sculptures, chairs, books, plates, lamps and indeed the entire buildings that make up his oeuvre. Equally important are the frameworks within which his works are perceived - be it a museum, a commercial gallery or a home.

Pardo was born in 1963 in Havana, Cuba, and moved to the United States in 1969. He has exhibited internationally at such venues as the DIA Art Foundation, New York and the Kunsthalle, Basel. Interested in both museum and non-art specific spaces, Pardo's projects have included creating a café for the Leipzig Messe, in Germany, a restaurant for the K21 Museum in Düsseldorf, a seating lounge for the Berlin Parliament and a pier for Skulptur. Projekte in Münster.

Jorge Pardo